Broughton Bashes Bschool (What Else Is New?)

Wow, check this one out. This scathing piece is by Philip Delves Broughton, the same fellow who wrote Ahead of the Curve, which I reviewed last month. The article is an unmerciful indictment of "The Masters of Business Administration, that swollen class of jargon-spewing, value-destroying financiers and consultants [who] have done more than any other group of people to create the economic misery we find ourselves in."

The article is harsh, sensationalist, and one-sided. It is essentially a list of disgraced HBS alumni (e.g., Skilling, O'Neal) with very little substantive discussion and zero mention of anything positive to come out of business schools. He never touches on the criminally-negligent regulatory environment that allowed such rampant behavior to persist, except to say that it was propagated by HBS grads Cox, Paulson, and George W. Bush. Nor does he discuss the issue of causation vs. correlation when finger-pointing at the MBA degree and the HBS institution rather than at the individual.

I don't think that American business education is blameless, but I do think Broughton could have done better in his "analysis." The article is a sharp departure from the nuanced view he presented in his book and is a puff piece at best. To his credit, Broughton did provide a humorous bunch of alternative meanings for MBA (Master of Business Administration):
- Mediocre But Arrogant
- Mighty Big Attitude
- Me Before Anyone
- Management By Accident
- Masters of the Business Apocalypse, his article's namesake